Song for Juli by Jesse Colin Young (Vinyl record album review)

Album name: Song for Juli

Artist name: Jesse Colin Young

Year: 1973

Number of discs: one

Label: Warner Records Inc.

Collection: Brenner / Gessner

Who owned it: my mother

Buy it on Amazon: $6.75

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

When I saw this record next on the shelf, my first thought was that I had no clue who Jesse Colin Young was, but then I was looking through my old reviews for something else, and accidentally discovered that I reviewed Light Shine by Jesse Colin Young (1974) late last year. I didn’t think it was good.

What I expected

My mother vocally claimed this record as belonging to her collection, told me that it would be folk rock, and that I may recognize some of the songs, but that she didn’t think I would like them.

What it was actually like

Several of them – Mornin’ Sun, Evenin’, Country Home – were folk rock style with a strong country rock sound, and not bad at all, but the auto-harmonized vocals were crap. He should have just recorded himself singing into a microphone instead of messing around with fancy techniques that messed things up.

The title track Song for Juli was pretty bad, with a long instrumental beginning, turning into jazzy elevator music with a terrible flute part.

I also disliked Ridgetop, which at 7:02 minutes, was over twice as long as it needed to be. It had an awful saxophone part that easily could have been replaced by another guitar (preferably electric, and with distortion). I did like the tempo, though.

Miss Hesitation was basically three songs in one, with two (the first a country song with harmonica, and the second elevator music) alternating back and forth, and the third (like the first, but Oompa Loompa) appearing at the end.

On the second side, there was a stretch of three great songs in a row, all covers. The first was a great and fun version of the blues classic T-Bone Shuffle with harmonica and piano (and here is the original). The other two, Clifton Chenier’s Lafayette Waltz and Hank Williams’ Jambalaya (which was the only song that I recognized), ran together as one song and were outstanding, but maybe that’s just because I think Zydeco (or maybe Creole, or Cajun) music is great. Here are originals of the former and the latter, and here are some covers of the former and the latter too. If I were Jesse Colin Young 50 years ago, I would record an entire record of covers like these.